Editorial Ponzi scheme

I was talking with an editorial colleague today about the feeling we get when we find a somewhat obscure error in a text, whether it's a newspaper article or a more permanent medium, such as a book. I think superiority is a good description. It's a cross of "How could they be so stupid/blind?" and "I'm sure glad I'm not that stupid/blind. Also, if it were profitable for me, that company should hire me."

In an experience based society, we always crave the next high, and that little charge that grammarians get when they catch a mistake can carry them for a while. It's almost like a currency, it's so valuable. But there's a problem.

Inevitably, I will miss a mistake in a manuscript I'm working on, or in my valorous editorial work, I will introduce an error. Somehow, it becomes just a mistake for me, and that's natural, and it's okay, and I'll do better next time, and really, seriously, believe me, please, I'm not stupid or incompetent.

Notice how when the paper is in my wallet, it's not currency? In the hands of the uphill editor, there's no value, but when the text is presented to another, there is suddenly opportunity for real value. But the value is not real. That person could hand the text down the line to someone who will find a different error that the previous editor insists doesn't mean much.

When dealing in a medium of exchange for commodities or services, this is criminal fraud—that only stupid people get involved with, right?

What makes it so different when we deal this way in words and ideas? I do get annoyed with the declining editorial standards in media, but I have been learning to not place a value on others' mistakes. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt that I so generously offer myself.

We should all strive for excellence, but not for the purpose of propping up insecure egos. Otherwise, absorbed in hedging our own egotistic positions, we will collectively turn out such poor quality work that we end up with zero value.

Water and bridges

I was typing an e-mail the other day, and I naturally felt the urge to combine two cliches in a unique and thought-provoking (to me) way. Okay, so, natural for me, but probably just weird to the reader and everyone else.

However, I enjoy the result of the combination, as it describes the nexus of time and event. People who obsess over personality often term themselves or others as "time-oriented" or "event-oriented." While my new not-yet-cliche doesn't deal specifically with that aspect of personality, it brings an awareness of time and an attention to the event. Yet it's also a bit carefree about time, and given the usual context of the central cliche, it gives a strange sense of preregret. After all the setup . . .

We'll cross the water going under that bridge when we come to it.

Good and evil

Our daughter has been getting into flipping light switches the last week or so. She can carry her chair to a switch, stand on it, and flip the switches. And she loves it!

A couple of weeks ago, we had an enormous fan installed in our ceiling, and for various reasons we don't want Evadel to turn it on. So now there's a switch plate with three switches, and she is not allowed to flip any of those switches. We had to take her around the house last night and show her all the switches she could flip, and then we reminded her of the one set of switches she can't flip.

It was a sad reminder of the futility of prohibitions dating all the way back to the first prohibition. It felt very formulaic: "You are free to flip any of the switches in the house, but you must not flip the switch of the knowledge of good and evil . . ."

Concurrent prognostication

For a while, I've had a distaste for the media's micromeddling in the state of the economy. They do influence the economy by trying to buoy confidence, but that prevents cause and effect from providing true consequence for policies and activities. (The same goes for the so-called bailouts.)

I finally figured out what troubles me about this. It's the practice of "concurrent prognostication." Journalists, pop economists, and politicians are all trying to foretell the future so they can manipulate something today so that the future will fit their vision so they can be heroes. Okay, maybe that last part is a little too dramatic. But they are afraid to let the world/economy/history/culture breathe. They put everything into understanding in the present what normally takes years or decades to discover. And when they intervene based on that hasty knowledge, I think it compounds the negative effects they were trying to avoid.

I'm not sure what the best fix is. In such an integrated world, it is probably smart to take steps to prevent collapses. Unfortunately, it seems we waited til we stepped just over the edge to start considering ideas to keep us away from the precipice.

Love and (versus) justice

The two most talked about traits of God these days are love and justice. Or love versus justice. This most often crops up in the bipolar discussion of whether God will save everyone in the end or whether he will punish some endlessly. So religious pundits call out their reasons for one or the other understanding of God.

I follow the Hebrew understanding that they are part of an integrated whole. But does one spring from the other? If so, I can certainly see justice springing out of love—a desire for the right treatment of those around me because I love them. But in no way do I see love springing out of justice. It just wouldn't happen. So to those who claim that at the most fundamental level God is just—more so than loving—I would encourage them to consider whether the kind of love that God displays toward his creation could ever originate from their conception of his justice.

In the end, God may punish certain communities endlessly. My proposal that God is love first does not negate the fact that he could bring retribution. But we need to (lovingly) quash logical fallacies before they twist our thinking further.

Objective truth

I had lunch today with my World Religions professor from last summer. She has an amazing mind, and I imagine we will be hearing a lot from her in years to come. We were talking a bit about truth, and it made me think of how I was trained to do evangelism.

The very best kind of truth that anyone can have is "objective" truth, no? That's the stuff we whip out when we want to shout down an atheist. However, if we chase the origin of that phrase, it seems that the observer of the objective truth must be the subject. In that apologetics paradigm, I'm uncomfortable allowing those subjects to be free, active subjects, because I've become disenchanted with how their worldview impacts the world. Even if God is the prototypical subject and we assert that objective truth is his, we still have to take a subjective position in order to define that truth.

The problem with that truth model is that it pushes every un-self-reflective subject into the position of object. So if I'm an old guard apologist, I see the object that needs to be converted, I grab the truth object off the shelf, and I try to get the two objects to play well with one another. It dehumanizes the human object, and it perverts what truth is.

This is where Dr. Ireland's thinking is valuable. She—confessedly borrowing and assimilating from many others—says that truth is a relational endeavor between subjects in which both subjects are transformed from their previous stases. I leave out some other key details in anticipation of her book being published. The point is, if we humbly see ourselves as subjects interacting with other subjects, the felt threat of evangelism is diminished. I'm not advocating some new "subjective truth" fad (which is actually very well in vogue). There is a time for everything. A time to be a subject, and a time to be an object. It's simply that our brothers (and usually not sisters, interestingly) who crow about objective truth need to stop objectifying truth and allow it to be the living, relational being we observe in the Bible—Jesus of Nazareth. When we allow him as subjective truth into our interactions, we can't help being transformed.

Sexual ethics and evolution

I'll begin by clarifying some of my comments on the Spirit's role in evolution two posts prior. First, this little line of enquiry is entirely experimental. It's a "suppose if" about the fact of evolution, although I am becoming more and more convinced of its veracity. Second, I hold strongly to creative, covenantal monotheism (the deity being YHWH, the God of Israel), and I don't think evolution diminishes this god's power, authority, or prestige in any way. In fact, the creative Spirit is given more room to work, and the only thing stopping him is creatures who are evolutionarily defiant. That is, they choose not to keep the standard of fully evolved humanity and instead revert to animalism.

Now, regarding sexuality, we see in the animal kingdom many different expressions. There's one fish, which in the right circumstance, can reproduce asexually, that is, with no sex act but the necessary sex cells are provided solely by the female. Other species, such as cattle, elk, elephants, gorillas, etc., have a dominant male who spreads his genetics to the females in order to ensure the survival of the species. I've heard that some eagles and cranes may mate for life. We see almost this full diversity of reproductive behavior in humans (which I'm using for Homo sapiens partially realized, not necessarily "fully human"). In fact, Bloodhound Gang has memorably expressed an "unevolved" sexuality with the line, "You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals, so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel."

So what if we "just do what comes naturally"? I think we fulfill a valid heritage from our ancestry. The Biology of Sin has been immensely helpful to my thinking in this regard. Accomplished neuroscientist Matt Stanford takes the concept of sinful behavior and chases down what is happening in the human body when the sin becomes compulsive. I cringe every time I think this, but perhaps those who follow their instincts are simply not as evolved as people who do not. (Caveat: More highly evolved people in this schema would also be humble. Also, we all lack evolution in some ways. Those who know me know that I can't control my tongue, making me a foolish communicator. But by God's Spirit, I am evolving.) So the compulsion that most guys feel to look at a woman a second time is probably a survival mechanism. It's his body's deep way of attempting to preserve what it assumes is some awesome DNA.

This leads to the question of the "fittest" that get to survive. There is a myth out there that people who limit their behavior for religious reasons are pansies. Actually, these people have more self-control, and they're following a blueprint for the most successful possible human existence. While animal behavior turns to infighting to prove dominance . . . Let's start over here. That sounds too much like a human office. Less evolved forms of life fight amongst themselves to prove dominance, get the best mate, secure the best domicile, etc. For gorillas, the proving of dominance is perfectly natural. It is the thing they do for their species to survive. But humans have ingenuity. This leads to medicine, which leads to someone like me with crappy DNA that causes diabetes to survive long enough to procreate and saddle their sweet little girl with a higher chance of developing diabetes. We can find ways to procreate and survive that don't involve beating our chests and shouting. Although, adolescent males don't often figure that out till much later.

So what is the profile of the "fittest" according to the New Testament? Be humble and gentle. Love. Serve. Give up your life for others. And Jesus alludes to exactly that: "The one who seeks to preserve their biological life will lose it. But the one who holds to biological life loosely will be rewarded with more satisfying life now and excellent life in the age to come." What is the effect of this behavior in human community? Peace. Flourishing. But beware the moment a gorilla in a man suit comes in trying to take control or prove something. Fear invades. People start getting defensive. Everyone begins to look down in their hands at that precious little thing called survival, and they clutch it tighter. And survival dies a little. That community just experienced evolutionary regression.

Now what about the fittest human sexuality? (Not necessarily what Ali G is describing when he calls a woman "fit.") I'm only going to attempt to describe this from a male perspective, because it's what I live every day. It's a trusting, committed relationship in which offspring can be borne who will learn the parents' fit behavioral traits and hopefully get nice genes along the way. The male will still look at women other than his wife and feel a procreative urge. But he tells himself thankfully that the Creator has supplied a fit partner with whom the family has an excellent chance of survival. And then he realizes that if he were to tend toward more basic mammalianism that he could possibly lose everything that he in his fitness has striven for.

So is sanctification evolution? I kind of like that idea. Regardless, our lives are all cradled in the hand of God. But as humans begin to willingly behave as God requests, we look more and more like the ideal human, Jesus. We don't necessarily need to become X-Men in order to have taken an evolutionary step. I believe Homo sapiens is the most biologically evolved species, even if we may not be the strongest or the fastest mammals. What makes us different is the complexity of behavior and communication that can enhance our survivability. So I think it is behavior that is the penultimate horizon of evolution. The only evolving that remains after that is for God's kingdom to become fully present at the resurrection.

Insanity and biblical wisdom/poetry authorship

I've recently begun to internalize the scholarly consensus about the authorship of books such as Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. The basic idea is that later composers (or even the culture at large) would attribute their work to an author to lend credence to their work and to honor them as the paragon of their tradition. For instance, David was seen as the greatest of YHWH's worshippers. Solomon was seen as the wisest at the head of a wisdom tradition. Doubtless, David wrote some psalms, and Solomon wrote many proverbs. But it's problematic to insist that every header in the Psalms that says "Of David" means that he sat down and composed it. (Never mind the fact that the preposition may not mean David wrote it, but it may mean that the psalm was composed "for David" or in his honor.)

Where does insanity come in? You've probably heard Albert Einstein's famous definition: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Problem is, the first place scholars can locate something like this sentence is in a Narcotics Anonymous handout from 1981. (See this site.) Why bring Einstein into this? He was a very, very smart man. He lends credence to my saying the aphorism. And nobody really wants to refer to NA in conversation.

This current example illustrates very well how biblical literature could have been attributed to famous people from the past. It just seems like the right thing to do.

The Spirit's role in evolution

I've been mulling the evolution/large early human community thing (cover article "The Search for the Historical Adam" in Christianity Today a few weeks ago). It was my observation of how some parents treat their children and how I treat Evadel sometimes that lead to my latest thought.

Presupposing an evolutionary model, in the beginning, or some time after the beginning, God breathed his spirit/breath into some primates and made the first human community. When they disobeyed, they died, or perhaps God's breath simply left them, and they went back to whatever advanced primatic state they were in. Let's look forward to another time when God's breath came powerfully upon people. Acts describes people loving and caring for one another in evolutionarily impossible ways, seemingly. Or at least their social behavior was counterintuitive, but it was the sociological evolution that God was directing.

Regarding parenting, it's interesting that nonhuman species show different parenting characteristics. Some parents eat their young. Others abandon the kids to fend for themselves. Still others hang with their brood for years to give them the best opportunity for survival. When we think of human parenting, "good" parents equip their children with the best tools they can to support survival and thriving. (I really wanted to say "thrival.") However, we see alcoholic—or abusive, or otherwise dysfunctional—parents teaching terrible behavior patterns to their children. These children have their own children, and they often exhibit the exact same parenting tendencies.

Theologically, we could say that abusive parenting is sinful. Or we could say that God's breath does not animate such parenting, even if this Spirit is present, sometimes protecting young psyches, sometimes restraining awful behavior. (And sadly, children still die at the hands of their parents today.) But think about some of the accounts in the First Testament. Parents would place their babies in the red-hot arms of flaming Molech idols. That's terrible parenting. That's worse than anything we see in the animal kingdom. Other animals, as far as I know, do not use technology to invent ways of torturing and disposing of their young.

This leads me to wonder if awful parenting, for instance, shows evolutionary regression. Other examples would include leaders committing genocide (physical in despotic regimes or emotional in workplaces), spouses speaking harshly to one another, and taking something illicitly to enrich oneself. (Strangely, this model of evolutionary regression is also called sin.) Humans have the choice to let the Breath of God animate them, or they can seize the fruit and declare that they can handle the differentiation between good and evil.

I've heard antievolutionists say, "Well, if evolution were true, why haven't we evolved into something else?" I wonder if it's because we've squeezed the Spirit of God out of the lungs of our communities.

Geography-based congregations

I've been processing my "personal" ecclesiology for a couple of years now, mostly in my brain's down time. Today I had a thought breakthrough. I was talking about a book I am proofing, which is entitled "Dead Church Walking" by Jimmy Dorrell.

One of my big vexations about church is the apparent complete lack of unity. Even if there is a little church which members get along well, serve each other, and serve the world, the congregation is still likely at odds with other congregations in the same town, probably because of theology.

I know that denominationalism emerged from the inability of disagreed parties to find common ground. That was probably fair when the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church was intractably corrupt and wouldn't listen to any critique. Luther didn't set out to found a new church; he simply wanted reform. But after a few splits over seemingly important issues, it became very easy to split just because parties didn't like each other during a disagreement. Now denominations (at least in America) seem to serve theological tastes, just as building, music, and preaching styles serve aesthetic tastes. Those are a few categories among which an individual can base their church attendance decisions.

However, one huge factor in church choice is transportation. With relatively cheap fuel prices, most people have no qualms traveling across town to their favorite church (selected on the above criteria). And here is the key move: the ability to traverse geography easily makes congregational diversity less likely. If I'm going to drive to church, I'm probably going to choose to mass with people who are rather like me.

I think one important way to encourage diversity is to commit to attending a truly local church. What if Americans did not travel further than one mile to their place of worship? They would be forced to relate with whichever people live near them. You are probably wondering about communities that are completely homogeneous regarding race, economic class, etc. I wonder about those too. I'm not sure I have an answer to that question. But as I look at my neighbors, there is incredible ethnic diversity in the two-house radius all the way around. If we were to meet as a house church, we wouldn't have the issues of ethnic homogeneity. However, we would all be middle-class suburbanites. But the important point is that we wouldn't be able to choose who we're with. I think taking some choice away from people—especially those in "higher" classes in America—would help to move focus off of self and onto really being the church.

Perhaps if people began to have their choice of church limited a bit, they may then choose to move into a more diverse setting where worldviews and skin colors are truly diverse. We may stop quibbling about minor points of theology because there would be much bigger preferences to sort out. And I think people would be less likely to break fellowship since they wouldn't be "standing for the truth" as much as discussing matters of taste. And this may be a small step toward a unified body of Jesus from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation.

Christianese

I was in a meeting this morning where the topic of Christianese came up. One person mentioned how people's hearts are crying out to be authentic, but all they can do is speak the language of the church (or pseudochurch?) in order to not look bad or to be accepted.

Wasn't this exactly what Russia did in the Ukraine or Germany did in the Czech Republic? There was an imperial regime language that was required to be spoken or else very bad things would happen. The native tongue was spoken only in the most intimate, secretive settings for fear of being found out and punished.

Worse than that, perhaps, many good people are forced to keep their innermost thoughts to themselves because they fear being ostracized if they are honest. These people can't even find the "soulmates" with whom they can be honest because they have never spoken a common mother tongue of honesty with anyone else.

The church is meant to be a place of honesty and authenticity. It's the one place of all places where we should be able to share our deepest hearts with one another and seek healing and redemption.

As I look across the religious landscape in America (which is the one context I can address with some authority), I see Christianese as the de jure language—and in many ways, it has become the de facto language. The region is ripe for regime change.

Celebrity politicians

I was walking through a store last night and saw Bristol Palin's book. I mentioned to my wife how silly our celebrity culture is, and she noted Sarah Palin's TV show. I got to thinking, were there celebrities in the Bible?

The first one that came to mind was Absalom. Not only was he a celebrity, he was a celebrity politician. He set up a statue of himself, was kind to the disenfranchised, and was a total chick magnet. Everything was set for him to overthrow his dad for the kingship. But one thing led to another, as it so often does, and he ended up hanging in a tree by his hair and getting stabbed with three spears.

With the number of politicians we've seen recently literally hanging from figurative trees by their metaphorical hair, I wonder how much of this is tied to seeking celebrity. Is vanity enough of an instability of character that it needs to be accompanied by risky behavior that will inevitably lead to a fall? Or, as Ecclesiastes says, does time and chance happen to us all, and a proportional amount of the anonymous populace screws up in exactly the same way and rate as their representative sampling of elected representatives? Is it the much maligned 24-hour news cycle that won't permit relatively private ignominy of public figures?

The Palin family have become the darlings of a segment of the population, the hated targets of another, and the family that another segment wishes would stick strictly to their private lives and leave the world alone. Regardless, I fear that there is enough instability of character in the celebrity seeking that someone will do something really stupid. And I never want to see anyone—friend or foe—do something really stupid.

I haven't covered 12 percent of the angles on celebrity, but if you'd like to add something, I'd be curious to hear it. I'd be especially curious to hear who you think are more celebrities from the Bible.

Internet leaves litter version of phone search obsolete

As I was driving today, I saw a van with the name "A All Animal Control." That immediately tells me this company violated grammar conventions in order to make it to the top of their category in the Yellow Pages. ["Yellow Pages? What's that?"] They probably chose this because "AAA Animal Control" was already taken in our town. This is yet another cultural artifact left obsolete by internet searches. Who wouldn't search for "animal control [town name]"? No need to win the alphabetizing game in that case.

Is Google's algorithm screwing you?

I read an article today about Americans having trouble getting helpful information on NT Wright when they searched for him. I thought this odd, given that the internets should give the most relevant information about a topic. And there's the rub. In today's algorithm, most relevant has to do with where your IP address is located and what those with IP addresses in your geographical locale have searched for. So news posted from UK IP addresses is virtually inaccessible to Americans, since they're unable to see the most accurate news post in their search results list.

This fact renders some of the most pertinent websites inaccessible, not due to the inability of the user to type, but due to their inability to see the searched site. Today's new word: hinternets. Example: The search algorithm left my site in the hinternets because it was busy selling crap to the people who actually wanted to see what I posted.

Live Better Stories

I visited my college roommate up in Vail over the weekend, and we went to the Teva Games (sponsored by what was originally the footwear company). I picked up their soundtrack CD, and it had the phrase "Live Better Stories" on it. Turns out it's their tagline.

I was startled by this, since I live in the Christian realm, and I thought it was people like Walter Brueggemann and N. T. Wright theologizing about story and Don Miller bringing it to an intensely practical application. In some ways, I subconsciously thought "story" was an "Emergent theology."

So what's up with Teva? Why are they so enamored with story? I think they are tapping into a rich craving that people have, which some Christians have been working with. So it's not just religious groups talking about living better stories.

Shane Hipps, author of Flickering Pixels, was an ad executive who handled the BMW account. He decided to bail when he realized that having the power to make a grown man cry using a BMW commercial wasn't all it was cracked up to be. But somehow, Teva has produced a profoundly religious—actually, profoundly human—video without Christian overtones. And it made me cry.

It's so beautiful to encourage people to be fully alive. I would protest that the activities in the video aren't the only way to be alive, but they are still a very important avenue. And for those of us Christians who are into creational living, we have a touchpoint here.

Live Better Stories.

A hermeneutic of versejacking

On this blog, each post "of late" has come with some disclaimer. This time, it is "I will be through seminary in less than two weeks."

My last reading assignment has shed light on a question that has vexed me for years. The assignment was “Were the English Puritans the ‘Saints of the Most High’?” by W. Sibley Towner. I'm pasting below a modified version of a homework question on the reading.

On one level, the article points out that it is perilous to force correspondence of every detail between a Scripture text and an event. Prophetic visions aren’t to be taken as prenarration or even allegory. The article aims to take the edge off the fact that millennia of Scriptural interpretation have gone against what seem to be sane exegetical principles. It speaks to my issues with interpretation. I describe my tension with the title of an essay written by John Walton (now of Wheaton): “Inspired Subjectivity vs. Hermeneutical Objectivity.” What made it okay for Peter to say, “For it is written in the Book of Psalms: ‘May his place be deserted; let there be no one to dwell in it,’ and, ‘May another take his place of leadership,’” which are two versejacks extraordinaires, but I intuitively know that what many interpreters do to texts is simply similar violence? The only difference seems to be that Peter was inspired, and since the canon is now closed, none of the rest of us is permitted to ravage the text to carry off our own edificatory plunder. Where Towner’s article succeeds is in offering a plausible alternative to this tormented worldview. Of late I’ve been wrestling with certain African hermeneutics where it seems Spirit-filled people are truly enlightened by their terrible exegesis. Why can’t the Spirit work in his people this way? So Towner says we should see both sides of the exegetical transaction as serving a greater reality. The greater reality is God’s grand purpose in his creation, and a valid interpretation of a text is one that corresponds in a similar way with the ethos of God’s creative and redemptive work. So the text and the interpretation are both equidistant from the greater reality. It so happens that the text is canonized and thus scrutinized till kingdom come. I’m not yet willing to say I fully agree with this, but it is such a refreshing alternative to a decade of wrestling that I must consider it.

Paul and replacement theology

I've been discussing so-called replacement theology with some friends recently. In short, its opponents tag the idea that "the church replaces Israel in God's plan" as replacement theology, even though this is probably an unfair simplification of a quite complex issue. I don't have time to write a treatise of my position (at the moment), so I'll merely share some thoughts that emerged from reading one little phrase in 1 Corinthians. I hereby affirm that I don't think I'm doing violence to the text or context by focusing only on these few words.

The topic is the monetary collection at the end of 1 Corinthians. Presumably the beneficiaries of the collection would be predominantly Jews, because they were poor Jesus followers in Judea. (Any Romans/Gentiles would probably be merchants or soldiers with enough income to get by.) Notice how Paul refers to them: "Now about the collection for the Lord's people."

What denotes "Lord's people"? Jesus followers in general? Nope. This is specifically about believers in Judea. Any believers in Judea? Not really. I don't think Paul was necessarily putting a burden on Christians throughout the empire merely because there were needy persons who were Christians who happened to live in Judea.

My understanding of this may not be completely solid, but I think there's something more going on here. I think "Lord's people" refers mainly to Jewish Messiah followers. But why the enigmatic special designation? Why not "Now about the collection for the Messiah followers in Judea"? At this early stage, it appears Paul had a appreciation for the Jewish ethnicity that brought us Jesus. They got a special designation that theologically could apply to all but really does apply to some specifically.

I don't think we could accuse this early Paul of rapacious replacement theology. He still did honor the Jewish ethnicity, even if "Israel" was already being redefined as anyone who followed Jesus.

Psalm

I'm taking a class on spiritual disciplines, and this week's project was to write a psalm. I take my inspiration from this Gungor song, and particularly from the album cover art.



Creator YHWH,
All things are yours;
All exists at your word.

You craft the delicate flower;
You form the mountain ranges.

By your love and pleasure
Beauty springs forth from the earth.

Your tiniest image begins to create;
You create creativity itself.


Creator YHWH,
All things rebel;
All antagonizes each.

Petals fall;
The crags quake.

Against your great love and care
The earth groans its dissent.

Your image conceives evil;
It unmakes that composed at your command.


Creator YHWH,
All things are made new;
All will praise your Name.

The disintegrated is knit together;
The twisted coalesces into beauty.

Because of your love and mercy
Your creation is restored.

You indwell your image
Who shares in maturing beauty.


Creator YHWH,
All things are yours;
All testifies to your glory.

Platonic button

I just realized that all the books that Amazon recommends for me are business books varying from crappy to somewhat respected. I was a bit shocked until I realized that I have been scouring this genre to search inside the books to verify bibliographic data for my job.

What if I want to see recommendations for books I actually want to read?

I propose a "platonic button." When I'm going to Amazon for strictly professional reasons, I click the button. Then when I'm done, I can click it again, assuming my next search is for something I would be genuinely interested in.